for the birds

Difference is bad

On a recent trip to a well-known gay bar in Dublin, I witnessed the door staff turning away three well-dressed young women from their establishment stating ‘’It’s not your night lads’’.

This got me thinking to times that my straight friends and I had been turned away from similar night clubs with the same statement. Naïve me thought it was simply because these places were exclusive and very difficult to get in to, when in reality it was probably for a much less exciting reason.

Get out!

Femme frontier

Why is it that if a girl and her friends approach a gay club decked in heels and a frock, they have a very high chance of not getting in? In this day of fighting to be seen as an inclusive part of society and not a separate niche, are we closing ourselves off from our heterosexual counterparts by excluding them from participating in the gay social scene?

Now don’t get me wrong, of course gay bars are a mecca for hen parties and such, but in the incidents I have experienced, if you are not part of a novelty Christmas/hen/stag do then you can be judged by your appearance when seeking entry to certain venues. Am I as a lesbian expected to dress like a member of One Direction to go for a few drinks? Are ‘’femme’’ girls not welcome in the male-dominated gay circle?

But only if you have the uniform

Dress code

All questions which have caused me to consider whether or not the many gay stereotypes used internally by gay people young and old, have caused irreversible damage to the scene as it stands.

This is not something I expected from a scene as large and varied as the one in Dublin, and I for one will not be donning chinos any time soon for the sake of a night out.

7 Comments

This! I’ve been turned away from the George because I was wearing a skirt & heels and might I add it was absolutely bucketing snow & freezing. The bouncers literally asked my friend if she was gay and twhen she said no they refused her entry. If this happened at astraight club and a group of gays got refused because they didnt look straight there would be uproar. I stay away from there and choose other gay hubs instead,disgraceful.

This is way too common in the gay scene in Ireland. I find myself, that if I go to a gay bar wearing a dress, I get looked at funny by my friends, or other gay girls look at you as if you’re a bit lost. Can i not leave the Cons at home for a night? Do I have to dress “gay” to feel comfortable?

I know of a gay bar in Ireland I wouldn’t set foot in unless I was dressed casual because you would be made feel so uncomfortable by other lesbians who have actually questioned a friend of mine a few years ago “sur you’re hardly a lesbian?” and made her unwelcome. I’m as gay as they go yet I’m not allowed to be femme?

I think there is blatant homophobia within the gay community itself and we’re very slow to move away from it. My girlfriend went to the George once and hated it for the same kind of thing. I’m going off topic…

Anyway, with regards to the straight girls being turned away, bouncers seem to do that a lot, pointing out that it’s a gay bar, etc. but if they’re turning people away simply because they’re straight it isn’t right.

As a guy I’ve been turned away from the George and other places because I wasn’t dressed ‘gay’. Now I don’t know what exactly the qualifying criteria is for entering a gay bar – I would not have assumed that it was more an issue of ‘looking the part’ rather than of sexual orientation.

Surely the only qualifying criteria for getting in there is that you look like you want to go there. I was asked by a Muslim friend of mine, who is incredibly pro-LGBT rights, if she could come to the george… and i HAD to tell her no because she would not get in wearing the scarf. I knew that they would make it difficult for her and would turn her away citing the ‘comfort of patrons’.

I don’t think this is an anti women thing i think its a prime example of heterophobia and stereotyping to the highest order. I think that in order to be accepted on the scene you must look like you belong there and any sort of diversity is quashed or erased due to these perpetuated stereotypes. It is particularly prominent for women though… I have no idea why that’s the case (possible casual sexism on behalf of certain gay men?) but it really needs to change. We usually go to so called straight bars and just occupy a corner and have a good time! I try to avoid the scene :/

I think a perception developed a few years ago that permitting groups of straight girls onto the scene in numbers would attract in straight fellows after them (this certainly did happen in one of the clubs in Cork at one point) and that the ensuing hetero groups would constitute a threat to the gay folk present.

Its a difficult one, to be honest. I certainly did see, in Cork, that a lot of the element who did traipse into the bar in question were ambivalent about gays at best, and sometimes unequivocally homophobic at worst. That said, in over 20 years on the scene, I can probably count the number of open homophobic incidents from straight people who’ve “wandered in” on one hand: and none of these involved straight girls who’d popped by.

I do have a real problem, however, with second-guessing somebodies sexuality on their dress style. I’ve a few friends who are gay or bisexual women who are hyperfeminine in the extreme, to such an extent that their sexuality usually comes as a surprise. I’ve known such women literally from day one – since my teens – it is nothing new. I’m not impartial to throwing on the odd cocktail dress and pair of 5 inch heels myself, given the appropriate occasion.

Whats happening here, however, is that the security staff are casting judgments on patrons sexuality: that isn’t appropriate. There used to be a standard “you do know what kind of bar/club this is?” that I occasionally used to get, especially when out with a mixed group. I’d suggest dropping an email to the bar in questions management and suggesting that they perhaps talk to their security staff about more appropriate ways to filter out potential trouble. Most straight people coming to a gay bar know what to expect and don’t do any harm at all.

There is, unfortunately, a small element in both the gay male and lesbian communities who are hostile to both straight and feminine women of indeterminate sexuality, and this is just wrong and should stop.

My girlfriend and I (both femme) were refused entry into the george. I just find it ridiculous that just because we were in dresses and heels that they presumed we weren’t Gay. They literally said “this is a gay bar girls,find somewhere else”. We were more than taken aback to be honest and it was our first time to actually muster up the courage and go to a gay bar, look where that got us? What proof do they need, do they want us to kiss or what?

We made our way and discovered some other Gay bars in Dublin that we much prefer now, I have no desire to be butch not that I have any problem with that style at all but I personally like being a “lipstick lesbian” and just feel it’s a joke. I’m not going to change who I am to get into a bar and if they want to loose a couple of customers because of their ignorance towards more “femme” girls or maybe more “manly” men then that’s their problem and they can blame themselves for making my girlfriend and I feel that we were unwanted within the community for the way we dress.

I think a perception developed a few years ago that permitting groups of straight girls onto the scene in numbers would attract in straight fellows after them (this certainly did happen in one of the clubs in Cork at one point) and that the ensuing hetero groups would constitute a threat to the gay folk present

You’d wonder why, if the straight men are the ones they’re worrying about, they end up refusing entry to femme women instead?